


Die By The Blade

by Noxnoctisanima



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 07:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxnoctisanima/pseuds/Noxnoctisanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is aware that he could have turned out a lot worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Die By The Blade

Arthur is quite aware that he is on the shadier side of the law. A criminal, for certain definitions of crime, manipulating a dream is still to new to as yet be regulated. He has killed, though as yet only in a dream, but he does not imagine that he would hesitate unnecessarily if it was needed.  
And he is wanted, under various names by various people, some more official than others.

But despite all that, Arthur is also very aware that he actually came out of his childhood surprisingly whole.

His family is not one who would be ashamed by the criminality of his life. They are conmen all, thieves and killers, of both the high and low class, though they were as a family (if one that he had long expunged from his life) inordinately fond of blades.

Arthur's first knife was no plastic mock up, it was not blunt or some (inappropriate) child's toy. It was a flick knife, sharp enough to shave hair. Arthur still has the lacewing scars on his fingers from where he learned, his family firmly believed in learning by experience.

He was three and a half.

He learnt how to sharpen a blade before he learnt to tie his shoelaces, these everyday skills considered somehow superfluous. He taught himself, through necessity, while his family taught him the skills of the knife fight, the thrown blade, the cut-purse.

He carries more scars from this, a longer slash down his side from a lunge gone wrong, the twisted solidity in the webbing of his hand for a mishandled switch blade. He does not resent them, for all they itch in the heat, they hold no real memories, no real emotion, they are merely products, just as his token is, memories of a dream life.  
   
They even have their uses, a certain legitimacy in shadier dealings, a warning, or even a story, telling Eames of a life he will never speak of so that he never asks.

He is defined by the blade, it is in his blood, his bone and can never be forgotten. He will kill with it one day (Arthur acknowledges that it is not so much an 'if' as a 'when') and he thinks his family would be somehow satisfied by that, if they had not already died by the blade, as he knows he to will in time.


End file.
